Twitter’s little blue bird is reaching for the skies.
Shares of the popular micro-blogging site Twitter are flying above a previous high set on the company’s first day of trading — marking the first time its stock soared above $50 a share since the company’s initial public offering more than a month ago.
The surge kicked off on Monday with the stock jumping 10 percent in intra-day trading before climbing another 5.8 percent in Tuesday’s session to close at $51.99.
Twitter shareholders haven’t seen so much positivity around the stock since its Nov. 7 IPO, when the shares opened at $45.10 a share after pricing at $26 a share the night before.
Optimism around the IPO pushed the stock above $50 in Twitter’s first few hours of trading before closing at $44.90 a share, below the opening price.
The stock has been plugging along for most of November in the low 40s amid growing questions over whether Twitter, which has never turned a profit, was overvalued due to the hype surrounding its closely watched IPO.
Wall Street watchers like Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research are citing “optimism” over Twitter’s new advertising features for the sudden rally.
Last week, Twitter launched a new ad service it had been testing that will allow advertisers to tailor their ads to users’ Web-browsing history.
The new service, dubbed “tailored audiences,” uses browser cookies to match users with targeted ads.
So, for example, a Twitter user looking for New York City hotels, for example, may get a targeted ad for a free buffet at a Times Square chain hotel.
In a blog post on the new service, Twitter boasted “impressive results” from its beta testing.
It cited statistics from test cases including HubSpot, a software-marketing company, which saw a lift in engagement rates of 45 percent over their historical averages using the new service, Twitter said.